Southpa

The original Gibson SG is one of the thinnest and lightest, (aside from a friend's swamp ash strat) bodies I've ever encountered. To the point of the guitar being on the neck heavy side. For a carved top you can't avoid having the guitar on the fat side.

This reminds me of a co-worker who won a strat with Jeff Healy's signature in a radio contest. You would think that whoever was giving the guitar away would make sure the signature had some staying power. He looked around for some way to cover it then forgot about it. The guy is not a painter and not even a musician but somehow the signature got wore away. And now that JH has recently passed away?...oh well

All acoustic backs and sides are flatsawn anyway. Have a look at this picture. It depends on what sort of stresses the wood is undergoing and what measures are taken to alleviate those stresses. All guitar tops are q-sawn, easy to tell by what the grain looks like ie. parallel lines 1/16th to 1/8" apart. The top wood has to be q-sawn for its natural stability and its ability to deal with direct string tension while using as little bracing as possible.

+2 yeah ditto, I've got 2 busted off screws to extract after installing a hardtail bridge into mahogany. I just moved the whole bridge 1/16" and used new screws. What the hell, still some intonation room in the saddles. But I've decided to recess the bridge a tad anyway, so...out they come!

Two options, one of which I've already done and one that I am in the process of doing. I've moved everything towards the headstock by about 2.5" on my first "from scratch" build while maintaining a Gibson (24 3/4") scale length. The result is a potentially neck heavy guitar, I used mini-Grover tuners to lighten up the headstock and added some lead weight to the body. Also, neck joint is at around the 22nd fret, kinda weird to play the guitar because its out of proportion, takes a bit to get used to it. And lastly, I had to squeeze the 2 humbuckers a little closer together, about one inch, than your standard pickup spacing. The result is an interesting guitar indeed, you just have to get used to the 12th fret being farther away from the neckjoint. Right now I am building a scaled down (87%) Flying V for my friend's son. I intended to use a preslotted 25.5" scale fretboard I had handy but realized that the stop tailpiece was going to wind up in mid air with that length. This guitar is pretty much going to be a custom job anyway so I opted to make a custom scale length (23.5") giving me an extra 2 inches to fit all the hardware (Dimarzio super-dist, TOM bridge and stop tailpiece). So there ya go, I guess whatever you do is going to depend on what scale length you intend, sometimes you can't have your cake and eat it too and compromises must be made.

Thanks for the link, I looked around quite a bit but I found no mention of that piece of hardware. Shouldn't it be in w/ the ferrules? or does it come with the bridge? Anyway, I might consider getting some made at work out of stainless.

Looks nice, man ! I just botched my ferrules, ! could never get them perfectly in line and evenly spaced . Where did you get the ferrule plate for your guitar Boggs?

Posted w/out reading fully....nevermind.

Yep, there is a certain logical, however scatterbrained it may seem, order to doing these things. Just some morbid curiosity, got any pictures?

Your mahogany will have to be grainfilled and then a lacquer or polyurethane clearcoat. MUCH discussion about those subjects in this website. Use some of the terms i mentioned in your search and do MUCH reading. Its already here!

I've used the Schaller roller bridge on a few guitars now. No trems on the guitars but I don't care. They are excellent when it comes to adjusting string spacing. They can hold a note as long as the rest of them.

A flap disc on an angle grinder means business. It only takes a few seconds to make body bevels with one of these. http://www3.telus.net/Alsplace/Current/009.jpg

Would you think it really mattered all that much if the grain ran parallel the edge of each wing instead of with the centerline? Just trying to make the best (and easiest) use of my mahogany, its the last of my 2" stock. The neck is going to be a near full body tenon, will have solid paint and the usual large pickguard, so the direction of the grain won't be noticed. I just can't see any structural problems, but would like to get some input on that issue. Somebody convince me one way or the other! Otherwise I need to glue 2" on the end of each wing.

Long hair!?? Long gone, maybe I'll change my handle to "Ilikes2shed"

That reminds me, I gotta boil some more bones! I been making nuts 'n acoustic saddles like they been goin out of style and running out of bone stock! So what kind of animal does corian come from anyway? the same one that supplied the covers to all those nauga-hide couches? I'll look for some locally. And fwiw all my paint jobs, with the exception of my current build have been done with rattlecan paints. Namely, Minwax high gloss poly, Plasti-kote "superlacquer" (primer, black and clear) and that other one I buy at Cdn. Tire...oh yeah, Duplicolor (gunmetal grey, black, clear) . I've also tried some low cost acrylic lacquers I bought at Zellers, I sure learned about compatibility issues between brands. But there were successes. One that stood out was a blue metalflake that I used on my custom SG. Smaller can, sorry forgot the name. I took my current build to work for clearcoating. A small bottle of Grand Marnier got me a real professional HI-GLOSS poly coating, 2-part Imron, the hardest, most durable stuff you can find. I'm not even gonna bother wetsanding, I don't think I could ever bring that kind of natural shine back. "Farming it out" this time was not a matter of choice as I moved from a house to an apartment a few months ago.

I have a set of those tiny rasps for shaping stuff like volutes, they go by the name of "riffler files". Very efficient little tools, you can remove and shape wood very quickly, then sand etc. I just keep forgetting to leave that area thick enough to make a volute. Most of the necks I've built just flow into the headstock.

Nuthin wrong with Plasti-kote, best rattle can "super-lacquer" I ever used. Its all trial and error and I admire folks who can put out something nice with limited resources. If you can't make the stuff work for you then you have a problem. Nice job with the white Explorer Pros. I really like the well-defined volute...reminder...I gotta work on my volutes.

The most accurate way I've found, for me anyway, is to get the numbers from a fret calculator, eg. the one at Stewmac and make a CAD drawing of the fretboard, inputting each number to the 3rd decimal along a straight line. Then print it off and cut it out w/ scissors. Tape it squarely to the fretboard and, with the aid of a steel ruler, CAREFULLY cut the lines with a utility knife. Take the paper off and rub chalk dust into the cuts to highlight them. Then cut to the proper depth with a slotting saw. I DO NOT taper the fb before cutting slots.

You seem to be under the impression that you have a genuine Gibson SG body, is it a set neck or bolt on style?, you haven't mentioned that. I don't know if you are aware but as far as I know, REAL Gibson SG's are all set neck guitars, ie. mortise and tenon joints. If its a bolt on then you have a cheap copy, at best an Epiphone SG. If that is the case I am sorry to have burst your bubble and I hope you didn't shell out major bucks for a "Gibson" SG body. If its a set neck then you obviously need to find a real SG neck, with matching scale length and tenon to fit the mortise in the body. I don't know if they are all identical but I somehow doubt it, so some minor mods might be needed to get a good fit. http://www.thegearpage.net/board/archive/i...p/t-312517.html

Yes, forstner is safer and easier to control. That bit you are using is for drilling holes thru joists to run plumbing and wires. I stay away from bits that lead with only 1 or 2 cutting edges.

Check the next 3 frets ie. no. 2, 3 and 4. If no 2 was lower than no. 3 when checking frets 1, 2 and 3 then the block should rock on fret no. 3 when checking 2, 3 and 4. I only use rocker gauges for spot checks and that is rarely. I've gotten the whole fret levelling, crowning and polishing down and don't like to waste time and effort, so yes you could be over-analysing. Stop looking at the individual trees and look at the whole picture (forest thru the trees analogy, right? ) When someone brings me a guitar and says, its buzzing here and here and here and sounds dead over here, I don't mess around and try to fix those individual areas. I go right for the throat and do the entire fb. Knocking only one fret down could simply make the problem recur at the next fret, fix that one and then the same problem with the NEXT fret and so on. Before you know it you've done the whole friggin' neck anyway!

I pretty much live in the heart of bigleaf maple country. I got to talking to a few people at work, who own property out in the country, about various guitar woods. I showed one guy some samples of flamed maple from a Taylor magazine and he says, "Oh yeah, I got that stuff all over the place". I let him know that sort of figured wood is very much sought after for guitar building. All he could say was, "It sure burns good!" If he were to be a little bit on the enterprizing side he could be sitting on a potential gold mine. He also mentioned that he has lots of trees with huge burls on them. The guy wants to know what sort of dimensions are the most popular for figured maple. I built an entire tele body from one piece, basically 1 3/4 X 14 X 20, or around there. But if one wanted to do a bookmatched top what would be the desired thickness? Any other uses you can think up as well?

Sort of reminds me how the fly met his current girlfriend. He flew into a bar and saw this beauty sitting on a steaming pile of sh*t. He approached and asked ..."pardon me, but is this stool taken?" The rest is history.

Got any pictures of this project? Personally I can't say how you should begin unless I know what you are wetsanding. If there is a dye or stain job under ...how much clearcoat? which is what? new poly, nitro lacquer, original finish? need some more info. If you are going to do this on a Gibson archtop then you should exercise some caution. ie. If you have a stain or dye covered by a thin layer of lacquer then I think 400 grit may be too agressive. Otherwise, it depends on the thickness and condition ie. runs, sags, drips orangepeel, pitting etc. of the spray job that you might have to deal with. If you are SURE you have a good amount of well-cured paint and/or clearcoat down you could be aggressive but make sure you constantly monitor your progress. That means good lighting, using even pressure and uniform technique. Block sand the flat areas and use foam for curved areas. Use finer grits on curves and corners. Mop up often and examine what you just sanded.

That shouldn't be happening at all unless you are using the wrong kind of paper, ie. garnet for dry sanding.